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Success transcends cities as one of the world's most respected business leaders. I know what it takes. Join me now as I sit down with fellow leaders, and we share our insights into how you can be successful. My name is Jeffrey Hazen, and
Jeffrey Hayzlett interviews Ben & Jerry's CEO Matthew McCarthy on values-driven leadership, controversy, and corporate activism.
Key Takeaways
- Businesses must pick a side and be transparent about their values to build trust with consumers and employees.
- Controversy is unavoidable; companies should not fear backlash if they genuinely believe in their causes.
- Healthy disagreement and tension within teams are essential for high performance and innovation.
- Leadership requires balancing decisiveness with inclusivity and fostering an environment where all voices are heard.
- Ben & Jerry's exemplifies how a company can integrate social, economic, and product missions successfully.
Summary
- Jeffrey Hayzlett hosts a discussion with Matthew McCarthy, CEO of Ben & Jerry's, about leading a brand that embraces social and economic missions.
- Matthew shares insights on why businesses should openly take stands on social issues despite potential backlash.
- The importance of allowing employees to bring their values to work and fostering transparency with consumers is emphasized.
- Matthew discusses how controversy is inevitable and how companies should respond by standing firm on their beliefs.
- The interview explores how disagreement and healthy tension within teams can strengthen organizational trust and cohesion.
- Matthew reflects on his transition from Unilever to Ben & Jerry's and how his leadership style aligns with the brand’s mission.
- The conversation touches on Ben & Jerry's long-standing vision of linked prosperity and social justice commitments.
- They discuss the role of storytelling and rapid adaptation in business, especially during crises like the pandemic.
- The dialogue includes how Ben & Jerry's supports its workforce and maintains its omni-channel presence.
- Leadership lessons on engaging teams, embracing values, and navigating controversy are highlighted throughout.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Overview of Success
- 02:59Values in Business and Consumer Expectations
- 05:48Facing Criticism and Taking a Stand
- 08:40Healthy Debate and Team Dynamics
- 11:40Ben & Jerry's Vision and Linked Prosperity
- 14:35Leadership Decision-Making and Team Inclusion
- 17:12Storytelling and Business Adaptation
- 19:59Employee Support During Crisis
- 22:38Omni-Channel Business Model and Origins
- 25:57Leadership Insights and Closing Remarks
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
this is All Business. Hey, they tell you breaking the rules is bad, but our guest today leads the IC and pioneering brand that continually breaks the rules on how business can be a force for good in the
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world. Matthew McCarthy is the CEO of Ben and Jerry's, and he leads a global team of passionate ice cream aficionados and aspiring activists while safeguarding their long-standing three-part mission of delivering economic, product, and social mission impact whenever the
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company and wherever the company operates globally. So before joining Ben and Jerry's, if we listen to this resume, Matthew led a number of classic brands during his 22-year tenure at Unilever, like Hellmann's, Norax—oh, Axe, I'm going to ask
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him if he still uses it—and Dove. Welcome, Matthew. It's good to have you here.
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Jeffrey, thank you very much. That's a—do you use Axe? Seriously, do you use it?
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I do not use Axe right now, but I use other products that are from Unilever.
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There you go, brother. Good to see you. Good to have you. I have to ask you because it's right there on your website, and I love this because one of
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the tenets that I have in the Hero Club is to pick a side. I don't care what side it is, just pick one because then at least we know where you stand. But you like to run into controversy rather than
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running away from it. Was the fear of public backlash enough to stop you from supporting a cause? Isn't that enough right there?
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Absolutely not. Yeah, and I get asked this question a lot. First of all, thank you for having me.
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Absolutely, Greg and Trish. I appreciate you including me in your program. I get this question a lot, near the top of the list: Aren't you afraid of pissing people off? Aren't you afraid of alienating half your consumer base or
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half your potential consumers? And in fact, what I've come to find is that narrative is not only less and less appropriate every day, I think it's dangerous, particularly if you're in the CPG world where you've got
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a brand. Listen, all humans have values. All teams and companies are in the business of serving other people, whether it's for your products or your services. So the idea that you should not allow your employees, your partners, to bring
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their values to work just doesn't make any sense. And in fact, I think in today's hyper-transparent world, the people we serve, our fans, they demand that we let them know where we stand all the time. And in fact, if you don't share your
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values, a lot of consumers think you're just hiding them.
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Yeah, you know, and I've said this for a long time, and I wrote about this in the Hero Factory again: pick a side. Because let's take Kathy down at Chick-fil-A. I don't agree with
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his politics. I don't like his stand on same-sex marriage. I don't like the way he treats those people who might be gay, lesbian, homosexuals. I mean, he has a different view about them. He treats them as great people, don't get me wrong there,
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but that doesn't going to make me stop doing business with him. He has the right to do whatever he wants, and he makes a good chicken sandwich, just like you guys make great ice cream. I might not like all your things. I mean,
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you guys, listen, I live in South Dakota, you live in Vermont. I'm sure that we won't agree on everything, but I like Cherry Garcia or whatever—Jerry Garcia, is that what it's called? Garcia? Yeah, I love that stuff, brother. You don't
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ever stop making that. You know, why is it you think that corporate America has been so hesitant to be able to take a stand on what we might call controversial issues or any issue for that matter?
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I, we could probably spend hours talking about this. I think a lot of it just comes down to us as people. People don't like being criticized, right? People, it's just a human thing, right? You don't want someone tweeting or you want to see a headline that says you
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suck or we hate you, we don't like you. It's controversy. Controversy is considered bad for business, and people generally steer away from it. The interesting thing is that controversy is coming your way whether you plan it or
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not. You know that, business people, it's coming your way, and it's coming faster than anybody has ever seen. And so we don't go seeking controversy. We don't seek out—you're not trying to pick a fight, but if a fight's brought to you,
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you'll stand up for what you believe in, right? And you have to. Our consumers are really watching very closely. Our partners, we work very closely with NGO partners. They want to know where the hell we stand on different issues. So I
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listen, I don't think it's helpful to go picking a fight or seeking to create controversy for controversy's sake, but I do think that people in the business world can be a bit too thin-skinned. And
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you have to just decide: are you not taking on an issue because you're afraid of being criticized, or actually you don't believe in it? Because if you believe in it and your people believe in it,
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it's one of the best ways to galvanize your staff around things as well.
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Yeah, do you find even being at odds with your own staff and team, or is everybody pretty aligned around what you guys believe in?
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Oh, this is a great question. So listen, I'm not aligned with my family sitting around the dinner table, so it's a crazy idea to assume that any group of people that come together, like Ben and Jerry's, everybody's of the same mind. What I
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would say is that a couple of things: people know what we stand for. It's not a secret. We've been super public about it. These are our stands on any number of issues that relate to social justice or climate justice, and people that choose
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to be part of the Ben & Jerry's family do so knowing those things, period. So it's not like it's a secret, and I think that's why it's also really important to put your values out there as a business. The second thing I would say is that
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nothing destroys trust faster in your organization than people not feeling heard.
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Yeah, so disagreement, I welcome it. I encourage it because I want people—we're not going to agree on everything, and anybody who has that idea that somehow we're all going to just be
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Kumbaya all the time, that's a complete mirage, and that can be damaging to itself. At the same time, what you can't do is just shut people down. People disagree with something I've done or we've taken a stance on or on a
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social justice issue. Create the space to be heard and agree to disagree. That's normal.
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Yeah, I like healthy tension, and in fact, I talk about that. I think healthy tension is a good thing because it gets you to a better place, doesn't it?
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Yeah, I think people being heard and being validated, even if you don't agree, is super important for team cohesion. Tension is another thing. Tension is a superpower if managed well within a business. That's
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a whole another topic, but I do agree with you on that.
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Well, we could say healthy debate, certainly healthy debate. We both agree on that. Tension's a little tougher to pull off. I agree with you there. But high-performance teams
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typically have a lot of tension, which is also a good thing because you have that competitive nature. So I'll give you that too. How I—I'm just curious. You, you're driving me a whole bunch of
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questions, Matthew, about you as well. I mean, you came from Unilever, brother. I mean, that is not what I would consider the Ben and Jerry's kind of playbook for the kind of person I would look for typically. I would. But at the same time,
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you seem to fit the mold for what I would think would be Ben and Jerry's: the way you show up, the way you look, the way you speak. Like, this is—I love that stuff. So how was it difficult for
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you to step out of the one what I would kno—
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conversation going on uh what so I I don't want to speculate on things I don't know but I'll speak from from my perspective is that probably about 10 years ago just selling stuff just wasn't enough for me now don't get wrong I'm
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super competitive guy I want to grow I'm in business we're not an NGO I'm in business I like to grow I like to win I like to serve my customers and serve consumers that alone wasn't quite doing it for me and so I naturally naturally
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me I I was finding that I wanted to do more with the businesses do more with the brands specifically through environmental right environmental Animal Welfare for some of our products that are uh agricultureal an animal based products or in agriculture sustainable
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regenerative agriculture and I started moving in that direction and just kept progressing that way so Ben and Jerry's you know you don't always know how the hell you get into a job but once you get there you sometimes go oh this makes
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this makes sense so I'm incredibly fortunate I I think I'm I have a position of of privilege to be part of the Ben and Jerry's Legacy um particularly at this moment when we've got so many challenges both on the
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business um and the uh the the social and social justice and climate Justice FRS so what are the principles that you're living by at Ben and Jerry's and do those differ do those differ across the whole unever uh brand uh company no
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so let me answer the second part first is that the building on that that idea of of brands with purpose it's not BS it's very well published in fact Paul pman really helped accelerate the role that we're on and the current leadership
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under Alan choke had had just progressed that uh and so uh I think that while each of the businesses or Brands May uh have very different expressions of purpose Andor social or climate issues that they're tackling there's a lot of
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commonality in why they're doing it now that being said and Ben and Jerry's we're Guided by a very simple Vision that Jerry and Ben laid out uh almost you know almost 43 years ago and this idea of linked Prosperity the idea that
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as our business grows all the people that we touch all the communities that we impact and can impact benefit with us and that vision of Link Prosperity is supported by our three-part Mission a product mission to make the best
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products in the best way possible an economic mission to grow profitably and make sure that we are a thriving business that's healthy uh and then also a social mission is for us to actually this kind of where we started your first
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question was how do we bring our values and do business differently and make business part of the solution not just doing less bad in the world how do you start that off every day at work I mean do you do you you send out an email once
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a week or how do how do you put that forth so that everybody gets it everybody's drinking I use the word Kool-Aid they're drinking the Kool-Aid or eating the ice cream every single day and knowing this is what we're supposed
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to be doing yeah that's a that's a great question I I'm quite fortunate that I've got a tremendously talented staff um and I try to be a student of new power uh and andain transition from a lot of the
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stuff that I learned from much of my career which frankly is yesterday ways of leading uh around old Power and so um a lot of my job is ensuring that we've got Clarity of the tethers between the actions that everybody's taking every
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day week and month and how does that link back to our three-part Mission we certainly have embraced agile principles within the business uh as a global company we've got a all kinds of programs that range from sustainability through to Innovation how do we drive
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our core and a number of other projects so everybody's pull everybody's kind of rowing the same direction on the stuff they're doing say from a project basis uh whether it's products or social Mission um and then a lot of my a lot of
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my job is actually getting the hell out of the way uh because the vision's crystal clear uh it doesn't mean it's easy but it's actually very clear so when people are confused what about this what about that my job is to provide
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Clarity Clarity is power and I want to provide that Clarity and then secondly I want to help get very out of my team's way so every day to answer your question is usually about um ensuring there's clarity about what needs to get done
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what does success look like and then radically redistributing power within the organization and following my efforts to get barriers out of team's way and actually in a lot of cases asking them what do they need me to do for them right that's probably the
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biggest change if you can boil things down I grew up in a world I spent a lot of years working where people were telling me what to do and I was therefore learning that that's what leadership is about I've had to shed a
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lot of that stuff you know there's are certain there are times you got to be super clear and there's decisions that I as the CEO that only I can take but there's a lot of things that I don't
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need to be doing but I was kind of taught well that's what CEOs do then the reality is no you know the F the higher you go the less you know yeah and I actually find that that's very much true
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particularly with the speed of business so I've had to recalibrate how do I keep you know 30 years of business experience relevant and fresh but not smother my staff with old ways of thinking that all everything needs to go through me or I'm
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the grand POA that that that not only slows down the organization and decision-making it actually is a real turnoff to younger Talent who have ideas and they need my help they may not have all the answers but they need guidance
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and they need freedom to actually do awesome stuff for Ben and Jerry's yeah you can't make as much ice cream that way there's no way you know I I always tell everybody because my team will ask me and I said I don't know I asked my
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very talented goodlook and uh and motivated team that's the way I try to live that the more I do of that I find out that I get a lot more done in fact my my new rule right now Matthew is
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following you is better than following up on you and and that's what I'm I keep following you is better than following up on you which means go do it get it done make it happen I think that's important you know everyone has changed
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course in the last number of months you know what was your biggest hurdle and how did you overcome it I can imagine manufacturing was a little bit of an issue sometimes distribution could be a little bit of an issue how did you
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change things yeah that's a I'm glad you asked that um and and we're still in the middle of it right and uh these the recent increases in spikes not only in the United States but we have a big
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business in Europe um and the lockdowns it's still present it's nothing's going away right and everybody who's in business understands that sometimes better than than than than other folks do the first order of business is always about um lives then livelihoods right so
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the models quite simple we didn't invent it lots of people were talking about that back in kind of March and April but the idea of lives first what needs to be true across all of our touch points so I
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closed my offices we kept manufacturing open what does it look like and how do we actually leverage the best science uh medical and hygiene practices to make sure that we're keeping our people safe across all touch points that's the kind
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of first order of business and then the second thing was really making sure that we pivoted right so we're a company that um we don't do a lot of traditional advertising but we created a tremendous amount of assets and a lot of
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Storytelling a lot of dialogue you know tens of thousands of assets that we create every year some of those assets overnight were no longer relevant so we had to literally set those aside and immediately pivot the team to say how
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are we pivoting now that's not cool can't be talking about that that launch doesn't make sense that asset doesn't work and so there was a tremendous amount of work that the team did in kind of the um February into March uh March
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into April to Pivot the business so that we could keep um supporting uh the the activities uh of of what we're doing the third thing I would say is uh keeping up with Demand right so we've had a a big
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surge in in our business we were already growing pretty pretty nicely beforehand uh but we're the the we lead in e-commerce we lead in home delivery uh and uh in traditional channels you know I uh being in the cpg being in the
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grocery business for a lot of my life uh never had imagined that I would see both e-commerce taking off and traditional retail taking off uh that way so keeping up a demand and taking care of our manufacturing folks people talk about
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Frontline workers well the people who have the privilege of working from home because they're an office situation there are challenges that come with that and I'm not going to sugarcoat it manufactur ing folks are are really the heroes in a lot of ways going to work
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every day and putting themselves out there so caring for them and taking care of those folks and the last thing I'd say is we have a big restaurant business at bener we're in the scoop shop business we've got hundreds of shops
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around the world that have been hit incredibly hard uh really devastating and so supporting that Network supporting our franchisees who we value uh so so much has been um uh been been a big task for us it's what are you doing
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for them mat because I I mean I you know I think we talk about business we talk about First Responders and I keep talking about a lot of our community or business First Responders I consider you and other leaders in the seawe business
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First Responders because our job is to get people back to work and to take care of not just the lives but the livelihood because without the livelihood we don't have a lot of lives I mean in terms of
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what we can do but but when I think about those restaurant workers when I think about those people in in you know in food in the food delivery business and what they do for us it's amazing they're they're they're First Responders
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they're making things happen what are you doing to really help help take care of them um I'm glad you asked there's there's a number of things the first order of business was giving people a sense of security immediately coming out
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and telling people you're not going to lose your job we are going to make sure that that we keep paying you and and just take that right off of people's plates CU everybody was just completely freaking out uh uh in the beginning so
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that was the first order of business is making sure that people understood that we would continue to pay them keep them on the payroll whether they were going to work or not if you had to stay home to quarantine because you came into
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contact with somebody we're going to pay you to stay home we want people if you come in and you're not feeling good we're going to send you home and we want you to stay don't make that choice you
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don't want people have to make that choice right and it sounds like it doesn't sound like rocket science but I was shocked to see many businesses not doing that in Q2 or not providing the right uh protection equipment for for
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their employees I think that's probably the first order of business and as it relates to our franchisees I mean there's a whole Suite of things that we've done to help them uh both economically you know waving fees um
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basically uh reducing the cost that they have to input to say marketing uh of the brand and any number of of things in that space and also um helping with expertise so we had a lot of people early on
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saying how the hell do I apply for these loans right people literally small business owners that they put their life's nest egg into buying a Ben and Jerry's franchise we have to take care of them we have to help them and support them
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and providing uh expertise and support right down to how am I going to pay my rent uh and and helping people through some of those issues and uh thankfully we've been really fortunate we have a tremendously resilient and compassionate
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uh Team uh and that includes our our franchisees and and people have come together in ways I've never in my life seen the importance of the idea that that that I I refer to it is compassion as a business imperative you know this
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isn't some kind of like warm touchy feely poster that's outside of your HR department yeah it's not not a as a business imperative um and making that clear and explicit and unequivocal to people family first if you don't take
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care of yourself and take care of each other forget about the freaking ice cream and you know that sounds basic when you say it but you just have to put it out there to make sure people understand that you care about them as
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people and their families then the ice cream in a lot of ways kind of takes care of itself you know You' got a couple parts of your business that aren't doing well but the overall business is doing really well so that's
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got a little bit of a mix in there I mean how do you blend that across the whole group I mean because some people would say you know if you're an operational excellence kind of business nope if that's not doing well we should
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cut it we should move on it we we've been given air cover is was that ever a thought for you guys in the business to say okay gosh no no no no no no no I'm I'm glad uh I'm glad you you raised it
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uh if you think of Ben and Jerry's was started as an omni Channel business before it was cool to call things Omni Jerry and Ben started a shop about two miles down the road from where I am right now in a used gas station and they
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were always in the business of people coming to them for ice cream or for them to bring the excitement and the joy of ice cream to events and not so we've always been in the business of figuring out a way to get the joy of Ben and
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Jerry's ice cream to people in places and when I think about for example our scoop shops that have been hit so hard it's impossible to extricate to separate the value of the experience of going into a Ben and& Jerry's and
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getting incredible service getting an incredible product and having just yourself or you're with a a significant other or you're with your family your kids uh your grandparents that whole experience is priceless it's just one little moment people's day one little
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moment people's life it could be just a moment on their vacation but to then say when when when you know what hits the fan with an unprecedented pandemic that we just need to cut that off that would be
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insanity but yet there are a lot of businesses that are doing that and they're making a change and hints the difference and that's why we have hero businesses that's what we believe and and it's great to be able to see Real
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Witness of what we call the Hero factor and for those that are listening and watching right now the Hero factor is those businesses who put people in front of profits you can still do both and those businesses that do it you can see
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it right here they they gross more money than any other business out there they make more money than any other business out there they have employees who are more engaged which is important because 53% of the employees who work for
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companies today can't even tell you the values of the company Matthew I want to thank you so much for being with me live and sharing some of this wisdom sharing your belief but hey what a great conversation with the CEO of a hero
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brand that isn't afraid of controversy where most run from controversy they seem to embrace it and even run towards it Matthew shared how important it is to put your values out there as a business so your consumers and fans know what you
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stand for he's also about putting people first which I couldn't agree with more they're a true example of the Hero factor in business and putting people above profits Matthew phrased it best with his idea of compassion as a
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business imperative thanks for watching and I'll see you next time on all business with Jeffrey hazet right here on seet TV [Music] hi everybody Welcome to bestseller TV I'm Taran winterbell we're here with Don s Kirk she is the author of heartbeat
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leadership Empower yourself engage your team impact your organization Don it's great to have you with us thank you I'm great to it's great to be here so congratulations off the bat this is your first solo book uh so that's that's uh
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pretty exciting tell us tell us why this topic and you know why I'm always curious you know as a first time author what's the impetus and you know the motivation to write about you know this subject matter right well I've been a uh
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I'll call it a leadership junkie my entire life so it started out very early when I first left college and went to Corporate America and realized that you know this Corporate America game was a completely different game than I
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expected and so I went on this learning quest to understand what it meant to really be a leader and to learn as much as possible about being a great leader so I started reading tons of books John Maxwell Brian Tracy Anthony Robbins Jim
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Rome um and studied a tremendous amount and just became a huge passion of mine to be the best version of myself I could possibly be and then throughout my 26 year corporate career um LED large teams and was always focused on helping others
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become their best versions of themselves as leaders and then the impetus for the the book really came from colleagues and Friends continuing to ask me like when are you going to write a book why won't you write a book and initially I didn't
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want to um but then realized that if I really wanted to get the message out there I could not talk enough to people one on-one to get the message out there so what's the best place to get a
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message out is to put it in a book I just want to go back to something you said a moment ago when you got into Corporate America you said it was nothing like you had expected tell us more about that why so yeah so I I you
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know you can imagine when you first come out of school your very excited you're very eager to get started you've got this pie in the sky that you want to achieve and some of my first experiences weren't as positive as I expected them
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to be so I'll give you an example I started out with an organization in their Management training program and I remember going to some of my first meetings and walking in being excited only to not be met with kind of any
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welcoming hands um you know sitting at the table ready to contribute and give my ideas only to feel like I wasn't speaking at all and then have colleagues make similar comments and it's like oh that's a great idea and I I remember
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sitting there going like what is going on you know so initially I was a little bit discouraged you know a little disenfranchised and disengaged but I suddenly realized that a the goals that I had set for myself were greater than
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the obstacles that I was going to face so I said I have two choices I can react negatively or I can respond and still you know you know Purge forward to uh against my career goals and that's what
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I decided to do and that's why I went on this quest for learning on How to Be an Effective leader I wanted to make sure no one else ever felt like I did when they came into a room because I believe
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that every single person has something to offer and has a value that can be added to any organization if it's welcome and if you engage people accordingly it's really I mean everything you said it's it's very powerful so after that experience how
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did you learn how to deal with that you know what did you learn along you know along the way how did you pivot and and what changed so that yeah so honestly what really changed was just my mindset
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you know there's a saying that says it's not so much what happens to you it's how you choose to respond to it so I just chose a different response and I just really focused on how do I become my
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best self I can't control anybody else I can only control myself and when I get my teams I'm going to treat them the way that I want to be treated and set it you know set the example and lead by example
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so that became my focus more than some of the challenges I was facing um from others and when the opportunity presented itself then you know I tried to teach and coach and give feedback um about the situations and how I felt in
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some of those situations when they occurred and what I realized and learn through the process is that you know I don't believe anybody sets out to deliberately make someone feel uncomfortable or not included it's just a lack of of self-awareness sometimes so
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when you take the courage to say something and make somebody aware of a situation nine times out of 10 I found that the situation corrected itself okay so is that is that how you would put the book into words is is this book for
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leaders on how to be a better leader or is it about someone like you who is sitting in the meeting and and not feeling heard it's a combination it really is and that's why I have the subtitle Empower yourself is really
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about maybe you find yourself in a situation where like wow I don't know if I feel valued here or included that I don't want anybody to feel like a victim that you still have choice to make in terms of how you show up so I talk about
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how to kind of work through that anyway and then if you're a leader that has you know responsibility for large teams it's for you as well to understand how to fully tap into and engage that team that you're responsible for so that no one is
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is as potential is going untapped yeah and I'm curious when you got to the later stages of your career where you were this leader and you didn't want to treat people the way you were treated did did the people underneath you did
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they appreciate that did realized that you know they were getting an experience that you didn't absolutely and you know what I don't know if people realize it like immediately I get the most feedback like after I left the role and they have
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a different leader um and people would say you know what you were the best you know boss I ever had you know you really cared about people you really wanted to see me be my best you always took the
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time to to help me get where I wanted to go so I think people honestly did did appreciate it and the other comment I got a lot was that people felt like they can bring their whole self to work so I
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encourage people to talk about their personal life and I encourage people not to miss those important things particularly if you had kids if there was something special going on at school by gosh don't miss it it only happens
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once and I trust you to get your job done so go take that half an hour out and go sit through your child's program or what have you and I was doing the same thing for mine I always told my
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team if my family calls I'm going to step out and take the phone call if there's something going on at my kids school I will not miss it and um so I led that by example yeah well certainly
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the glad you wrote this book because the world needs more leaders like you who respect uh you know the team um something that struck me as I as I read the book you say that sadly most organizations have a heart problem yes
Speaker A
uh so tell us more you know what do you mean by that I think we can kind of guess but yeah so um it's it's it's a situation where you know the the focus on results is so strong and don't get me
Speaker A
wrong we're all in business to drive results and to hit bottom line but when it comes at the expense of people um that's when it becomes a heart problem because you know at the end of the day the heart of the business are are the
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people that work for you I truly believe that people are your competitive Advantage you know most organizations can duplicate your technology they can duplicate your processes and systems but if you've done a really good job with engaging your team that's pretty hard to
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replicate um and it's should be hard to to recruit away your team if you're treating them well and so I really want organizations to to have a a good balance between understanding that people help you drive sustainable repeatable performance and not the other
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way around and so that's what I mean by a heart problem that it's always about the numbers and people second if at all sometimes right so right you say the heartbeat is of a company is the people is the people
Speaker A
yeah exactly so what do you say to you know someone just to play Devil's Advocate who says you know the money you have money you have a business right I mean you could have great people and not making money and then you know the heart
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stops right that is true and that's why I say you got to have both you know so what you'll see in there there's a chapter that talks about people and and so many times when I'm talking to leaders I think leaders ultimately want
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to do the right thing again I don't think anybody gets up says I want to make the my team miserable but I do feel that people feel like they have to make a choice between you know if if it's
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about getting more numbers I've got to be focused on that and if I focus there then I'm not likely to spend the right amount of time developing my team giving my team feedback and then I would argue for those that say that's all they want
Speaker A
to do that if that's all you do that you might sacrifice some results what I talk about in the book in terms of my six pulses is a way to integrate and do both both so you can't do ores you have to do
Speaker A
both and when you do both even for the companies that are saying hey I'm getting great results and I'm not doing all of this people stuff that you're talking about I would submit to you that you would be doing even better if you
Speaker A
were to implement some of the people U elements of this because they'll go the extra mile when they feel engaged and they feel in they feel valued and they're there to get from the organization what they came to get and
Speaker A
they're progressing their careers as well the sky is the limit at that Point yeah but what about the Juggernaut companies you know like apple Amazon Google Facebook that you know you feel like they do you think they're really
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concerned at this point about the people as much as the you know the the bottom line it's it's hard to say I mean I haven't interacted with them to be able to say 100% no they're not caring about
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people you know but is there always an opportunity I think to to think more with a people lens first versus a bottom line I think so um and that doesn't mean that they're bad companies it's just maybe an opportunity to you know
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maximize and and and transform the results to even to the next level if they to really engage every individual's talents that they have on the team I'm sure some are going untapped just by default and you said there's a quote I
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like you say any complex problem can be solved um through people yes so I was curious like any real life examples you can share with us you know something that you experience that yeah so I I think many times particularly when we're
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at the higher levels in the organization sometimes I think we try to solve problems all by ourselves sitting in the Ivory Tower you know you might be looking at a p&l and say oh my gosh you know we're not hitting our numbers costs
Speaker A
are going through the roof revenue is not where we want to we start making these decisions in a vacuum sometimes it's hey we need to cut people we need to cut out all this extra maybe training and development and you know things like
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that and and the example I would give is before you start cutting things is this an opportunity to engage the team closest to the problem and find out what they have to say about it because I found that 9 times out of 10 the people
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closest to the problem have a whole lot of solutions they they even know how to fix it but because they have not been asked they don't offer it so they just keep doing what they've always been doing and or maybe they've given the
Speaker A
idea in the past and it was ignored so they just say you know what I'm just going to do the bare minimums and we're just going to keep going through the motions and maybe one day you know somebody will fix this but they won't
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take the ownership to try to help you and so that's what I mean by how how can you engage the teams closest to the to the problems to help you find the best Solutions right and I'm curious how did
Speaker A
you come up with the just this this whole heart metaphor you know you have six pulses of heart leadership and then you use you have uh some P alliteration you have priorities preparation people processes performance and promotion say
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that three times fast yeah try that so I've kept saying this phrase actually I had a coach as well so you know I coach other people but I had my own coach and he was pushing me about this book right
Speaker A
and I like h i don't I just don't think it's that complicated that it's worth putting in the book and he's like well I can show you a lot of best-selling authors that have simple Concepts at the end of the day if it was that simple
Speaker A
everybody would be doing it and we were just talking and he was writing on the you know the Whiteboard and I kept saying you know people are at the heart of the business like they're the heartbeat of the business and he kept
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saying I think you can play on that heartbeat analogy and so that stuck with me from that session about you know how can I use you know the analogy of how the heart how important the heart is to
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the body as people are to the business or to the organization that you're running um and it really started to crystallize for me that you know this is a great metaphor that I think people could identify with and um we all want
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to take good care of our hearts right um it's essential to to life at the end of the day but the I was just curious why the letter P alliteration was there was there another letter you were considering or was it just I think it's
Speaker A
you know I tried to do things that help people remember things and so I started with pulses so I tried to think about terms that were what's the word I want to use acronyms or synonyms to Heart like what are all the complimentary
Speaker A
terms to heart so we came up with pulses and you know that term kept coming and I had a bunch of different words and I wanted them all to start with the same letter so I played with it for a long
Speaker A
time and I thought pulses start with a P can I put this framework in the same uh you know vein using the the the first letter as a p and it worked yeah it's cute you know I heard you say your coach
Speaker A
pushed you you know there was another P which may maybe an extra an extra chapter exactly um I'm curious um so who is this book best suited for is this someone looking to become a leader is this someone in a
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leadership position who's trying to be a better leader you know who do you think is the ideal Target you know target market ideally ideally it's a person in a leadership role already whether it's their first time being in a leadership
Speaker A
role or frankly it can go to the CEO of an organization and actually I really want the higher level Executives to pick up this book because I think sometimes when you reach the higher levels of leadership sometime you think you've
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arrived there's nothing else I need to do to better my leadership style and I you know having worked at many different levels in the organization across many different functions and two you know Fortune 100 companies I see a lot of
Speaker A
opportunity and today I coach in Fortune 50 companies and and sometimes my mind is still Blown Away by some of the stories that I hear and at the heart of them no pun intended is a leadership issue and so I just think we have an
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opportunity to continue to learn and to become more self-aware about how we come across to others and I think sometime we have Lind spots and um I like our higher level leaders to take a look and say is
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there an opportunity for me to lead even at a higher level than I believe I'm already right so you mentioned coaching so you you've since left the corporate world I did I left the corporate world uh World it'll be three years in
Speaker A
February okay and I started my own coaching and Consulting and leadership development um firm you know strictly out of the fact that my entire career I've done this work and I wanted to do it at the next level and be totally
Speaker A
focused on on coaching and leading and developing teams and organizations so yes it's been almost three years of absolutely loving it and um you know the book I really hope opens up some additional opportunities you know from a
Speaker A
speaking and inspiration and motivational perspective as well as just helping larger teams learn to work together to optimize results and optimize um leadership development absolutely well it's it's a it's an easy rid just because it's relatable you know
Speaker A
we all know you know we we all have a heart and um you make it very user friendly and especially for your first book um it's really wonderful and by the way I'm going tell you I love the
Speaker A
background th those are some beating Hearts yes yeah I did a I did a launch um event a couple weeks ago and uh I had a person that I worked with and she had all these great ideas so I thought i' bring them
Speaker A
to help spruce up the background today it does it does well again the book is great uh and uh you're on to something um and we can't wait for uh the the next book and the next organ yes yeah somebody asked me like oh and I
Speaker A
and just real quickly I have already submitted my second outline for my second book and I'm contemplating you know building on the heartbeat leadership brand and just having a new subtitle and kind of continuing the thing so we'll see what happens yeah
Speaker A
keep us posted all right thanks again and congratulations thank you and if you'd like more information on the book just check out our website it's cbook club.com cyen sbook club.com I'm Tyran Winter bril thank you for watching we'll
Speaker A
see you next time right here on bestseller [Music] [Music] TV welcome to seet TV insights I'm Greg Greenberg good help is hard to find and the co crisis has only made it harder one possible solution hiring virtually pav stenov found our virt desk is here
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to talk about the benefits of hiring virtual assistants welcome Pavo thank you for having me Greg well it's good to have you here so what makes virtual assistance different from regular in-house employees well as the covid crisis has
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showed us uh any every uh you know in-house employee essentially became a virtual ass assistant at at some point so hiring virtual assistant actually allows you to scale uh the Global Talent reach out not across the country but
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across the globe to find uh great people at a fraction of the cost of hiring somebody in a house also you save on the cost of Labor save on the cost of office infrastructure so what types of tasks
Speaker A
can you delegate or offload to a virtual assistant what can they handle well they can handle a lot of tasks Greg uh it can be like answering the phones typically making Prospect calls for your sales team can be running your marketing
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department uh social media um you know posting and marketing and video editing can be anything that's uh doesn't require human touch or human presence uh like as you know to be there but any office work can be delegated to a
Speaker A
virtual assistant accounting anything some assistants need more skill than others so what type of virtual assistants can you hire for well you can hire uh pretty much anybody because uh there's a huge pool of college educated people uh people with experience people from uh
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Fortune 500 companies you can hire uh because uh with the co pandemic I guess the World opened up a lot bigger in a virtual sense if you come to think of it you can you can hire people uh for you
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know any type of position even uh you know V VP of marketing if you have to when would an entrepreneur know when to hire a virtual assistant at what stage of growth I guess that actually would depend on entrepreneur but if it's a
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small uh business owner and you just opened up shop you can hire somebody the second day you're open but I guess the the rule of thumb here is when you have so many tasks that you don't have enough
Speaker A
time of the day to to handle them or you know basically you're about to burn out then it's time to to to to bring some help and and have have somebody help you out or when you actually want to grow
Speaker A
your business and want to run an efficient team uh you want to make sure you actually bring enough help to make sure that everything is um run perfectly is that why you started virtue desk were you desperate for an assistant that's
Speaker A
right I was running a real estate brokerage out of Seattle where uh we we had um real estate agents needing uh virtual assistance and I was helping them to get some people from the Philippines and that's how the idea of
Speaker A
virtual desk started by actually me providing them with the qualified virtual assistance for Real Estate businesses and then I started uh you know um offering this across the country then finally how would an entrepreneur go from hiring one virtual assistant to
Speaker A
hiring two or three so how does one build a virtual team if you will well the best way to do it is uh hire one admin first it's called I would call Executive Admin and uh train that Executive Admin on the major tasks that
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need to be done help uh make sure they come up with a standard operating procedures and then you just basically separate the tasks by the people that need to complete them and you can hire people for uh you know
Speaker A
for different departments like could be marketing could be sales that could be uh you know your HR departments that's that's what it is and here at virtue desk we actually have uh several departments uh run entirely by virtual
Speaker A
assistance all right well thanks a lot for coming on and talking about it and thank you for watching CET TV insights I'm Greg Greenberg [Music]
Topics:Jeffrey HayzlettMatthew McCarthyBen & Jerry'scorporate activismvalues-driven leadershipcontroversy in businesssocial justiceteam cohesionbusiness leadershipbrand mission
